A displaced Californian composer writes about music made for the long while & the world around that music. ~
The avant-garde is flexibility of mind. — John Cage ~
...composition is only a very small thing, taken as a part of music as a whole, and it really shouldn't be separated from music making in general. — Douglas Leedy ~
My God, what has sound got to do with music! — Charles Ives

Friday, July 03, 2009

Henry Brant as composer and orchestrator for films

It's well-known that the late composer Henry Brant had an active parallel career as on orchestrator and composer for film, but a lot of his work took place under- or uncredited, which is standard practice in film music. During his life, Brant was always modest about his work as an orchestrator for the scores of colleagues, characterizing it as always implementing the style and preferences of the composer rather than in his own. Mr Brant's musical executor, Kathy Wilkowski, has been kind enough to share the following list of films on which he worked.

First, his collaborations as orchestrator:

for Virgil Thomson: The River (1937), The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936), Louisiana Story (1948; the score won Thomson the Pulitzer Prize in Music, Brant was credited as "music technical assistant".)

for Aaron Copland: The City (1939)

for George Antheil: The Scoundrel (1935)

for Marc Blitzstein: at least two films.

for Douglas Moore: Power on the Land (1940) , Youth Gets a Break (a WPA-related film; Brant stated: "it was for full orchestra; he left it to me."

for Alex North: The Misfits (1961), Cleopatra (1963), Cheyenne Autumn (1964), Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff (1966), Africa (ABC-TV documentary, 1967), 2001: A Space Odyssey (the score was not used in the released film), The Devil's Brigade (1968), Carny (1980; includes two compositions by Brant which were organ solos extracted from Brant's 1956 opera The Grand Universal Circus), Dragonslayer (1981), Good Morning Vietnam (1987)